Loot: The Surprisingly Complex Story Behind Maya Rudolph’s Hilariously Relatable Smoke Alarm Scene And How It Came To Life
Listen, we've all been there.
Minor spoilers for Loot Season 2, Episode 3 are ahead. If you aren’t caught up on one of Apple’s best shows, you can stream it with an Apple TV+ subscription.
I think it’s safe to assume that just about everyone has had to deal with a fire alarm or smoke detector’s batteries at one point or another, and I’m sure many can attest to the fact that it’s one of the more frustrating things to deal with. Well, in Season 2 of Loot, that relatable frustration was hilariously brought to life as Maya Rudolph’s billionaire Molly cluelessly tried to figure out how to get the beeping to stop. Now, the show’s co-creators have broken down the surprisingly complex story behind the creation and execution of this scene.
How The Loot Team Came Up With The Smoke Detector Scene
In Episode 3 of Loot’s second season, Maya Rudolph’s Molly sends her house staff home, and she says she can handle herself for the evening. However, things get chaotic when her smoke detector starts beeping. It’s a hilarious and truly relatable scene, and co-creator Matt Hubbard took the reigns to explain how they came up with it. Breaking down that it was born out of his own experience, he told me:
He went on to say that from this idea of Molly trying and failing to deal with the smoke detector, they worked “backward.” This ultimately got them to the storyline of her sending her employees home, and her being in the house alone. The juxtaposition of her being this extravagant billionaire and having to deal with a mundane normal issue was what really sold the bit, as Hubbard explained:
Rounding out the explanation of how this scene came to be, Hubbard noted that when you have someone like Maya Rudolph – who was part of one of SNL’s best casts and is known for making her cast mates like Michaela Jaé Rodriguez break on set – leading the show, it’s fun to put her in physical comedy situations like this one.
How The Loot Team Shot The Hilarious Smoke Detector Moment
Those comedy chops were put to work on set too. From a pool net to skis to ski poles to a broom, Molly tries everything to get the detector to stop beeping, and to accomplish the shoot for this scene, it takes a lot of work. Co-creator Alan Yang put that into perspective as he told me:
While the scene is super silly and seemingly simple to put together, it was actually quite intricate and took a lot of departments working together to pull off. Yang said that that’s the point. They want the moment to look “super funny” and “effortless,” and it takes all that hard work to do it. He said:
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It’s efforts and ideas like this that make Loot so brilliant, and it’s Maya Rudolph’s commitment to these relatable bits that make them so funny. Much like the fun Parks and Rec Easter egg featured in the comedy, this scene shows how much thought is put into this series, and it makes me love it even more.
Lucky for us, more hilarious moments like this are bound to happen as Loot continues to drop episodes on the 2024 TV schedule every Wednesday.
Riley Utley is the Weekend Editor at CinemaBlend. She has written for national publications as well as daily and alt-weekly newspapers in Spokane, Washington, Syracuse, New York and Charleston, South Carolina. She graduated with her master’s degree in arts journalism and communications from the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. Since joining the CB team she has covered numerous TV shows and movies -- including her personal favorite shows Ted Lasso and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. She also has followed and consistently written about everything from Taylor Swift to Fire Country, and she's enjoyed every second of it.